I'm assuming that you are talking about sequences <3
In the context of a recursive formula where we have "n-1" in sub-index of "a", you can think of "a" as the previous term in the sequence. In the context of an explicit formula like "-5+2(n-1)" "n-1" represents how many times we need to add 2 to the first term to get the nth term.
Dw if you don't understand, sequences and functions isn't an easy topic